'Piano man' mystery stumps U.K.
_____________
Nameless stranger
will not talk,
only plays piano
_____________
By David Sapsted
LONDON - British police are trying to identify a man found wandering on a beach five weeks ago who has not spoken a word but who turns out to be a piano virtuoso.
Officials at the Medway Maritime Hospital said the man has not spoken since being found soaking wet in the southeastern Kent coastal town of Sheerness, dressed in an expensive black suit and tie.
He is in his twenties or early thirties, slim with short brown hair and about 6-foot.
After failing to elicit any details from the patient, who has shown signs of being nervous around, hospital employees gave him a pen and paper, hoping he would write his name. But instead, he drew a flag of Sweden and detailed pictures of a grand piano, showing not only the keys but also the intricate inner workings.
When staff took him to a piano in the hospital chapel, he played expertly for two hours and, since, has written music and staged recitals lasting up to four hours.
"I am not knowledgeable about classical music but I could tell he was pretty good," said Michael Camp, a social worker in Medway's emergency department.
The hospital's staff have taken to helping the stranger, quickly nicknamed "the piano man," to compose more pieces as efforts continue to determine his identity.
A spokeswoman for the West Kent National Health Service Trust would not confirm reports that he has played sections of Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky, although she said he had staged a "beautiful" performance.
"There was nobody he was with skilled enough to recognize the music, they just knew it was classical music and played very well," the spokeswoman said yesterday.
"He's not talking at all," she said. "He's very frightened. He's drawing, but not to communicate. We are ware that he is a very vulnerable man and we would be putting him in a dangerous situation if we let him go."
Interpreters from Poland, Latvia and Lithuania were brought in to see if he was from Eastern Europe, and possibly an asylum seeker, but no one has been able to get him to talk. Despite the fact he drew a Swedish flag, police believe the man is probably English.
The hospital made an appeal for help from the British public on Sunday through the national service for missing persons, and released a photo showing a tall, thin man in his twenties or early thirties, with closely cropped blond hair and hunched shoulders.
"The Missing Persons Helpline has been inundated with calls. It's a fantastic response," Mr. Camp said later.
"A name has been given of a possible person from the Sussex area. I haven't been able to phone the person that phoned in to check it out."
He added: "We had one of these before, from the local area, and it sounded promising but...people start to think 'It might be this person that we know' and it doesn't quite materialize. We'll just have to wait and see."
Some callers said they thought they had seen the mystery man play at concert halls throughout Europe, prompting police to begin contacting orchestras to see if they can identify him.
"He has been playing the piano to a very high quality for up to four hours at a time and staff say it is a real pleasure to hear it. But we still have no idea who he is because he is not speaking," said Ramana Venkiah, manager of the psychiatric unit.
The man is now being held in a mental health unit in north Kent, which has no piano, until a full assessment has been carried out.
"There is no doubt that this man is extremely distressed and depressed. He has started crying over the last week or so. It may be that some sort of trauma has made him like this," Mr. Camp said.
"I cannot get within a yard of him without him becoming very anxious. Yet at the piano he comes alive. I can stand close to him and he is oblivious. It is extraordinary. The first time we took him down to the piano he played for several hours, non-stop."
The case has drawn comparisons with the Oscar-winning 1996 movie Shine, which tells the story of acclaimed Australian pianist David Helfgott who suffered a nervous breakdown while playing.
The Daily Telegraph, with files from news services
is that friggin crazy or what? i swear; real life is definitely stranger than fiction...